Criminal Short-cuts

Three long-forgotten fiction reviews I did for Crime Time:

Into the Fire

The Dogs Are Barking

E-Males

Some more grumpy than others.

Pelican State Hate

My response to True Detective, now showing on Sky Atlantic and available for pre-order on DVD if you want to get a Woody (Harrelson).

Wright here, right now

Coming soon: The anthology Richard Wright at 100  (ISBN 9789727729395), edited by PAULA ELYSEU MESQUITA and published by Edições Colibri. I've got a chapter in it.

Full disclosure from South Beach

It's all starting to make sense now. According to David Buxton in From the Avengers to Miami Vice: Form and Ideology in the Television Series, 'Vice was the first series to make use of neurophysiological research on the viewing process: research carried out in the Communication Technology Laboratory of the University of Michigan has shown that (American) viewers tend to become impatient with overly elaborate stories or characterisations. In an attempt to maintain constant visual and sound excitement, the series uses aesthetic devices from the clip (aggressive camera movements, "unnatural" colour schemes and mood music) to fill out the story rather than resorting to "irrelevant" complications of plot and dialogue, both reduced to a minimum' (p.140).* With hindsight, it's clear the 2006 big-screen adaptation took these traits to a greater level of abstraction.




* Manchester University Press, 1990.

Send her Victorian

I was tickled to read a recent report in the Independent about the decline of British stag weekends in Riga, Latvia. "I imagined that Englishmen would all be real gentlemen, like Sherlock Holmes," said 21 year-old student Marika. Unfortunately, "they are little more than animals."

Which nationalities have most disappointed you by not resembling fictional characters in late Victorian fiction? Perhaps Chinese men are insufficiently like Fu Manchu? Romanians who differ from Count Dracula? Mark your entry "modern nationalities which differ from their fictitious counterparts" and send answers on a postcard to ...

For reference

Coming soon: my entries in British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia, edited by Barry Forshaw and published by Greenwood.